Drug menace? Chicken coming home to roost
E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Ghanadot

The idea that between the years 2000 and 2007 our culture has grown so suddenly coarse that it now permits violence and drug use is so absurd that only a propagandist or a liar would want to make that assertion.

True, the incidence of drug trade and drug apprehension by authorities has grown larger. Hardly a day goes by without some headline in a local paper bringing these events to our attention.

Among the most spectacular ones that have come to our attention to date, and yet to be explained fully, is the disappearance of 77 parcels of cocaine from the vessel M. V. Benjamin, in which a commissioner of police is alleged to be implicated in the disappearance.

Before that, there was the case involving a sitting parliamentarian who was apprehended and jailed in the U.S.A for attempt to import illicit drugs into that country.

The case of the two British teenagers is also unfolding in the court system in Ghana. The enablers behind them are alleged to be Ghanaians.

Along with the drug smuggling is a wave of violent crimes, armed robbery and murder; a culture that is no stranger to the drug business. Many countries in South America are struggling under this experience, making normal life and economic growth in some cities there almost impossible.

It is, therefore, not strange that Ghanaians would be apprehensive about the state of illegal drug activities in the country. But as with some, the assumption is the problem has had its nascence within the past seven years. You would think that these minds would first ask how such culture of drug and violence gained grounds so swiftly in an erstwhile pristine country.

And the only explanation is that it is the easy way out and the most politically correct way for some ideologies to blame it all on the current administration while at the same time forgetting the frequency and the efficacy of the policing efforts that bring the criminal for prosecution within the court system under the current administration.

The critics forget that the criminal types that are hurting our society now cannot have had their beginnings during this short time span of seven year and that it is a logical impossibility to assume so.

The crime in the country today is not being perpetrated by seven year olds because these are not the ones carrying the guns. Rather, those doing the killings, the drug trade and the ones providing general terror to the whole society today are the group that matured as criminals after 1999 or before.

And these criminals are mostly the poorly educated, and the very gullible who because of the latter condition think that the way to a happy life is through the acquisition of sudden and unqualified wealth; hence the drug trade as an attraction.

Now that the crime is so apparent, it may not be too uncomfortable to examine the formative period of the life of the perpetrators of crime in the country today. They have grown up under and have known only one thing; revolution - violent revolution as politics for social “change.”

From 1966 until now, we have had several revolutions. The most famous or infamous was the 1981 revolt. And it was during these periods that our whole social structure became destabilized. Firing squad became public spectacles. Schools were closed down at the sign of the least disturbances. Violence was accepted as a way of settling scores, whether justified or not. And people of means were made to look like criminals, whether or not they truly are.

To buttress the revolutionary spirit of the time, arms were distributed freely among young tugs, uneducated or poorly educated. These are the pests that continue to nurture the criminal types in our society today.

These last few years have seen an unprecedented growth in our economy. Ghana is seen as one of the foremost democracies in Africa with growth potential that can catapult her into a Second World category. The criminal types only see in this potential the opportunity to carry on their nefarious activities. What they do and continue to do will hurt our growth.

What the critics have failed to observe, in response to the proliferation of crime, are the frequency and the efficacy of the policing efforts that bring the criminal for prosecution within the court system under this administration. The criminals will have their day in court rather than being executed on the firing range.

But one thing we must do in the face of this wave of crime is tone down the rhetoric. Ghana is not yet a Colombia where a Medellin cartel is threatening to bring down the government and a "Targor" is not a "Pablo Escoba."  We must encourage the security forces to prevent that from happening.

Also, we must promote a culture of respect for diligent, hard working people, whether they are poor or not and to respect the least the people with shady backgrounds.

In other words, drug kingpins must have no respect in Ghanaian society. This is not the time to provide cover for criminal types by attributing the wave of criminal activities in the country to the policies of an administration in power today.

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Washington, DC., August 13, 2007
 

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